presents for the dead

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/12/christmas-day-in-sandy-hook.html



Approaching Newtown, Connecticut, on I-84 on Christmas afternoon, a white bedsheet spray-painted with the words “PRAY FOR NEWTOWN” flapped on an overpass. Pale rays broke through a dull sky, streaking it white. It was the only signal on that chilly New England day that we and the few cars that bobbed by us on the road were approaching a zone of horror and grief. We saw a sign for Newtown / Sandy Hook and thought of how that vaguely maritime name conjures up a cheerful neighborhood tucked behind a dune. It was this sense, of the sheer ordinariness of driving by—how easy it was not to imagine what happened there—that made us want to stop and see the place.

Not even a mile off the highway, small memorials have sprouted up—a stand of twenty-six white crosses plunged into the grass of a churchyard, photographs of the dead children hung by strings from tree branches. A few hundred yards away from Sandy Hook’s tidy, modest main street, parked cars lined the road. We were not alone in having thought to stop there, apparently. We walked along the icy sidewalk, toward the center of town. Up a hill, we could see policemen in neon vests directing traffic at the bottom of the street that lead to Sandy Hook Elementary School. Many families had come with their children, bearing flowers and stuffed animals. I saw a little girl laughing and squirming in her mother’s arms; the mom looked dazed.

A main street with many institutions devoted to the care and entertainment of children—a karate academy, a kids’ barbershop, a music school advertising the Suzuki method, a store called The Toy Tree—is newly grim. People walked very slowly along the slippery street. No one we passed seemed sure how to adjust their faces. A church on our right had posted a laminated placard at the entrance to its parking lot saying “NO MEDIA.” In the window of the Sandy Hook Diner—a squat, cozy-looking building—a small green sign read “WE ARE SANDY HOOK, WE CHOOSE LOVE.” Another sign hung there, too, imploring residents to sign a petition advocating for an assault-weapons ban in Newtown. It was the only overtly political sign that we saw in town.


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